Boardless game

Has anyone had any luck designing a boardless game? I built a prototype of a fighter plane game that used a string with a washer at the end which is attached to the middle of the plane to determine both the distance and the angle of movement. There are guns on each wing and the furthest gun marks the maximum turning angle. My brother and I played it this weekend, and it worked OK, but isn't as precise as I would have liked it to be. I saw a post on using a measuring tape or rulers, but that is exactly what I wasn't going for. I thought I'd give it a try, but I personally like designing board games better because it seems easier to design controlled navigation logic into the game.

There is a published scifi game I bought awhile ago to do with spaceships dogfighting on the moon. It used car antennas for supports on blocks of wood, with a universal gimbol at the end to rotate the ship models on.

I've always found the two dimensional nature of spaceship games to be very frustrating - they're spaceships, if you want two dimensions, play a naval game... I gues sthe designers of more traditional space games can't think outside the box.
(and yes I realise that 3 ships or less in a combat and you don't need a 3rd dimension - it's the 4th ship that is outside the defined plane)